


Nightmare

by Andromeda (athalara)



Series: The Morpheus Cycle [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode Related, Episode: s01e20 The Siege (2), Established Relationship, M/M, Rodney's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 22:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athalara/pseuds/Andromeda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney never understood the pain of a broken heart, until now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

> Reposting of an old fic to centralize my fiction here. Originally written in 2005 for the _1 Bdr Ocn Vu_ zine.  
>  Spoilers: Minor for season 1. Series goes AU after "The Siege II".  
> Beta by Gaia.

Rodney McKay had been expecting to have his heart broken for months, but he had never expected it to be shattered beyond repair.

He had expected to be heartbroken when John inevitably left him, when John moved on to someone that suited him better, when the fancy passed and John asked himself what he saw in Rodney. In fact, Rodney tried to imagine it several times. He ran different scenarios through his head. Who’ll be the one to steal John away? How and when? He looked at John’s interaction with other people for clues, for body language signals, for longer than average glances, trying to gauge how much time he had left.

He had never expected John to fly a Puddle Jumper on a suicide mission to collide with a Wraith hive ship and detonate a nuclear bomb to save everybody in Atlantis, while Rodney could do nothing but listen to his monotone report and track the Jumper’s inevitable course on the sensor panels.

He had never expected John’s last words for him to be ‘Love you’ - with the whole control room listening. 

He had never expected his soul to break along with his heart, an almost audible snap in his chest.

He had never expected to break down and cry in front of everybody until Carson had to sedate him into oblivion.

And then he had never expected to wake up again.

But he did. And he had to carry on, to make John’s sacrifice matter, to give his death a reason. He had to carry on even if he could feel the pieces of his broken heart inside his chest, even if he wanted nothing more than to end everything and join John in the afterlife he hadn’t believed in for years, but wanted desperately to believe in now. 

He had to carry on knowing that John’s last thought had been for him, which was a blessing and a curse at same time, and that his last words had been those which Rodney had longed for but never expected to hear [from him] . . . and, worst of all, he had to live with knowing he hadn’t been able to say them back, and with knowing that John passed away without knowing that he had been loved. 

Rodney had to carry on with everyone knowing about them, trying not to lash out at his friends’ attempts to comfort him; trying to not bite Carson’s head off when the man was just trying to be the good friend he’d always been and help him through his grief; trying to not lash out at Radek when he was trying to do the same in his own stumbling but well-meaning way. He had to carry on even if neither could take the hint he wanted to be left alone with his grief, because there was too much to do, too much depending on him. Sure he wasn’t worth much as a human being right now, but Atlantis need him to at least keep up a modicum of sanity.

So he carried on, putting on a good face when people praised John’s bravery, especially when Ford and Teyla were around. The young lieutenant’s hero worship for John had turned into eternal devotion to the major's memory, as he attempted to pattern himself after him. Well, except for whom he was bedding. Ford preferred Teyla’s soft curves. And she was as devoted to John’s memory as Ford himself. If he had to listen to their rants about their hero one more time, Rodney was going to kill them both . . . with his bare hands – slowly.

With clenched teeth, he bore the barely concealed looks (never exactly to his face, but he always felt them pricking on his back) and the whispered remarks (always just out of range, never knowing if it was on purpose or if they really thought he wouldn’t hear them) that made his blood boil and tempted him to empty a clip into someone . . . mostly the grunts, who thought they were better without a queer on their midst, especially one commanding them. Not all of them thought that way, Rodney knew, but the ones who did were more vocal about it. Most of the others kept themselves in the background, none of them wanting to be suspected of the same inclinations. And that was for the man who had saved them all. For second time in his life, Rodney was sorely tempted to kill another human being – one that wasn’t evil and trying to kill him. At the very least he wanted to maim some of them, or beat the hell out of them. The grunts would make a good target practice for his rage and pain. And humankind wouldn’t lose anything important if they couldn’t reproduce. It’d clean the gene pool, in fact – totally altruistic on his part, of course.

But the worst part was the nights, the nights when he was alone in the bed he had shared with John, the bed where John had made love to him night after night for five wonderful, too-short months, the bed where he had given himself up to John and (now he understood) he had received John in return. He slept alone in the bed where their dreamspell was woven, where silence created perfection. The place where John’s hands had worshipped his body, learning him only by touch: the big expanses of flesh, the small imperfections (the ragged scar he got when he fell of a tree at nine, the clean one from an appendectomy), the darker hair that started ticker under his collarbone and ran sparsely down his chest. It was the bed where John’s mouth had tasted his skin, nibbled at his nipples, turning them into peaks, hard points, lavishing his stomach in long licks, dipping to taste his bellybutton and then sliding down to roll his balls into his mouth, first one, then the other, before engulfing his cock in warm heat, mapping the texture with his tongue, teasing the slit before taking him deep again and sending him to heaven. This was the place where John had claimed him, entering him as deeply as he could and then stilling, savoring the feeling for a moment before starting to thrust into him, sometimes slow and tender, building his orgasm slowly but surely. Sometimes it had been hard and rough, especially when something bad had happened during the day. On those days John took to completion with powerful, steady thrusts that never failed to make him come without even touching his cock. This was that bed and he couldn’t sleep in it, but he couldn’t leave it either and risk having the magic fade with memory.

Rodney stayed awake for hours in the darkness, the distant murmurs of the waves his only companions, thinking he could still feel some residual, infinitesimal part of John’s warmth or John’s scent on the bedding he couldn’t get himself to change – crying himself to sleep more often than not. 

He saw it, the wariness, the barely concealed anger, the tears shed due to his uncaring ire, the hate, the pity, the disdain, the understanding, the caring. He saw the way some of them jumped just at seeing him, how most of them tried to steer a wide berth unless work forced them to speak to him. He noticed the way only the ones who had known him for the longest time (Carson, Radek, and a couple others) really dared to confront him, to give him a piece of their mind, to try to smooth things out. He knew Colonel Caldwell, and even Elizabeth, had considered pulling him off his work and into forced psychological therapy. But he was the best they had; he was their best chance of getting home in one piece, so they put up with his permanent foul mood and his cutting remarks, unable to respond in kind when they saw the raw pain in his eyes, the mirror of his broken soul. 

For three months Rodney lived in pure hell, and during this time he came to understand why his grandmother hadn't survived his grandfather, the man she had loved reverently for 50 years, for more than a few weeks. In those three months, he came to understand how a person could die of a broken heart. 

And then one day an assault team found John alive, captive in a Wraith research facility they were about to blow up.

When Rodney saw Ford and Stackhouse step through the gate, carrying John between them, he thought he was dreaming. But he wasn’t. John was alive. He had to be because, in his dreams John was perfect. But the man in front of him now was beaten and bloodied, looking like death warmed over and with more injuries than Rodney cared to count, but alive. Alive. And here.

He ran down the stairs two steps at the time, arriving just when Carson was transferring John onto a stretcher. One of John’s eyes was swollen shut, but the other one looked directly at Rodney, who knelt at his side. And he smiled. And, before slipping into unconsciousness, he whispered Rodney's name so softly that Rodney almost missed it. Relief and joy flooded through him with such a virulence that he passed out right there.

Rodney woke up to the sight of John sleeping peacefully in the infirmary bed next to his. Slowly, still fearing it was a dream, he got out the bed and walked to John’s side. John was wearing those awful red scrubs, with bandages covering most of his chest and an IV in his right arm. His right eye was still swollen shut, with several butterfly bandages closing a cut over the eyebrow. His skin was a mad collage of purple and yellow with angry red scratches and white gauze patches. 

Rodney McKay had never seen anything more beautiful in his life. 

John was alive. John was breathing. John’s heart was beating. The beeping of the heart monitor was the most wonderful sound Rodney had ever heard, a monotonic symphony of life and hope. John was back. John was there, with him . . . John, who said he loved him with what he thought was his last breath; who might not leave him, might actually want to stay with him. John, his John, alive, that was the only part that really mattered. Everything else he trusted Carson to cure – not that he would tell the man. He couldn’t have it go to the man’s head and make him complacent. That definitely wouldn’t be healthy.

Still in awe, not daring to make a sound that might break the spell, Rodney rounded the bed to sit in the only chair in the room. Carefully taking John’s left hand between his, he settled himself comfortably to start the long vigil. 

He prayed for Atlantis to work her magic one more time.


End file.
